Venture Capital Is A Customer Servicing Business’

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Harshal Shah talks about RTVL’s new sector focus, performance of portfolio firms and exit strategy for Yatra.com.

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Harshal Shah, the CEO of Reliance Technology Ventures Ltd (RTVL) and a member of the leadership team at Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has a unique definition for the venture capital business. He believes VC firms are in the business of servicing their customers, who are portfolio companies and entrepreneurs. In an exclusive interview with VCCircle, Shah talks about RTVL’s new sector focus, performance of portfolio firms and exit strategy for Yatra.com. Edited excerpts:-

RTVL began as a corporate VC firm focused on technology and mobile sectors. We now see the firm diversifying into other sectors as well. What has triggered this?

When I looked at investing into technology in 2005, our mothership was Reliance Communications. We had access to knowledge of the ecosystem- the customers, the suppliers,  contracts, nature of financing and so on—as Reliance Communications was a Tier I and well-established mothership. That is why we started focussing on tech and telecom.

Subsequently, the other businesses of the Reliance ADA Group – Reliance Capital, Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Energy, Reliance Natural Resources, Reliance Power, Reliance Media & Entertainment–started to grow. We again had access to the same kind of knowledge and experience in these businesses. So, it made sense for us to look at other sectors. We believe that information and knowledge is an incredible competitive advantage for us.

Which sectors look attractive to you?

It’s very difficult not to see technology as an underlying theme for most of the businesses. But, outside of IT and telecom, some of the areas that I find interesting are retirement homes, cleantech, real estate infrastructure enablers (like standardising pre made homes), aerospace component or equipment makers and defence.

Would you look at investing across all these areas?

These are some of the concepts we are toying with in our organisation. We not only plan to invest but might go out and seek some of these opportunities. As a VC investor, we are investing into areas which could become an industry in its own right in the near future.

How did your portfolio companies fare in the economic downturn?

I don’t look at venture capital as an investing business. It’s actually a customer service business. The customers are our portfolio companies, entrepreneurs and the top management team. It would be pretentious to believe that we are the only people with money. We believe our money is smart money, and if we can go across servicing our customers, then we end up making our money greener than anyone else. This makes our model very different from a lot of other VC firms.

Every single portfolio company of ours, despite the worst downturn last year, has seen an increase in valuations, taken away market share from its competitors and hired employees.  If you look at the average IRR, that has been generated by VC firms for vintage 2006, the returns have been negative 50%. Our annualised IRR is in excess of triple digits at the point of time across the portfolio companies. Not a single portfolio company of ours will be a dud. Our model is fool–proof.

How is Yatra (portfolio firm) faring against other online travel agents. Is an exit on cards?

Yatra is a leader in terms of market share and it enjoys the highest customer awareness and retention. People find the Yatra interface most comprehensive.

We are making good amount of money in Yatra. In fact, we have a large amount of cash in the bank now.

Should I exit this now or not, the way I see it is that should we continue to increase our IRR in the investments or not. Now, there’s a company called C Trip in China, similar to Yatra. Started in 1999, it got listed in 2003 at NASDAQ at a market cap of $300 million and it eventually became a billion dollar company in 2009.

IPO is a possibility but not a given at this stage. In a year or two, it could happen.
RTVL has also invested in a company (Stoke) based out of the US.  How do you plan to gain advantage from this? (Stoke develops carrier-class mobile broadband gateways to enable mobile and converged network operators to maximise the economic returns of their 3G mobile networks.)

We led the round in Stoke and then got other investors like KPCB, Seqouia and DAG Ventures on board. We got Dan Warmenhoven – CEO of Net Appliance, a data centre management company — to join the board.

We have set up its office in Bangalore to achieve cost arbitrage. When 3G- 4G happens, Stoke should be the de facto choice for this kind of product.

What are the recent investments that you have made?

We are seed investors in Scalable Display Technologies Inc, founded by Rajeev Surati. He is to instant messaging what Sabeer Bhatia is to Hotmail. Just when Bhatia sold his company to Microsoft, Surati also sold his company Flash Communications to Microsoft. What we use today for instant messaging is based on his (Surati) technology.

As part of his thesis at MIT, he wanted to come up with better forms of projections to be used for the media & entertainment industry. He has 12 PhDs working with him and he also has a full time MIT professor on the company’s board. Scalable Displays has already broken even. (Scalable Display simplifies the creation of super-resolution, multi-projector displays of the highest quality and scalable size.)

So, if you connect normal projectors with Scalable’s software, it actually eliminates the need for having screens. This company has got contracts from the US department of defence, and from Japanese companies such as Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba and others.

yatra.com holidays season

Yatra.com has entered into a strategic tie-up with Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) to offer state guest houses. As per the tie-up guest houses in tourist destinations such as Shimla, Chail, Fagu, Narkanda, Barog, Parwanoo, Manali, Dharamshala, Khajjair, Dalhousie and Renukaji can now be booked through Yatra.com at prices starting at Rs 1100 per room night.

Speaking on the tie up, Pratik Mazumder, Head Marketing and Strategic Relations, Yatra.com said, “We are happy to be associated with HPTDC as another step in igniting the spark of the real holidaying experience through our for-all-pockets staying options. Yatra.com has always been at the forefront to introduce unique services/offers catering to all kinds of customers. With this initiative we aim to reach out to a wide customer-base primarily to the middle income group.”